


ode to queen mab

by GiuGiu



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Allison Hargreeves-centric, Angst, Character Study, F/M, Reginald Hargreeves' A+ Parenting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-01
Updated: 2020-08-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:01:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25645489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GiuGiu/pseuds/GiuGiu
Summary: Raymond stares at her in horror as she tells the man “More, more, more, more, more.”But she wants to burn this man. This awful bigoted monster. He burned her first, it’s only fair.When Ray pulls her away she realizes she did it again.She lost control.A deeper look into Allison's power with some added elements.
Relationships: Allison Hargreeves/Luther Hargreeves, Allison Hargreeves/Patrick, Allison Hargreeves/Raymond Chestnut
Comments: 22
Kudos: 122





	ode to queen mab

**Author's Note:**

> ok, i had half-written two fics about allison's power last year and then season two gave us more information about it
> 
> so enjoy this modge podge arsty power/character study
> 
> it's a little dark

1993

“No, Five!” 

Her brother laughs giddily and holds the cookie even higher above his head. Three stomps her foot. “Give it!” Her words are red and sticky and they _ooze_.

She watches her brother’s shiny blue eyes haze over with white. Like milk.

She screams.

1994

The problem isn’t that Three can’t make her power work. She’s been excelling, actually. No, the problem is that she can’t always get her power to _stop_ working. 

“A controlled trigger phrase has made a significant improvement in your growth, Number Three.” Dad tells her at the end of her private training session. “However, you need to focus more energy on containing your abilities outside of these sessions. Using your abilities for personal gain will not be tolerated.”

Three nods. She doesn’t always mean to use her power. She just isn’t sure how to stop.

“You are dismissed.”

She steps quietly out of the room, back straight and chin up, as is expected.

2006

“That’s not going to bring him back.” Allison says, she makes the words a gentle pink, she wants to soothe, not command. Her brother is sprawled on the floor of the kitchen, too many empty bottles littered around him.

If the black smoke seeping around Klaus’ mouth wasn’t enough of a hint that her brother was about to be cruel, then the empty grin on his face would be.

_“Sometimes she gallops o'er a courtier's nose,_

_And then dreams he of smelling out a suit;”_

The words come out hot and black like bubbling tar. They stick and burn. _Shakespeare_ , she thinks sadly, _he’s using Shakespeare against me_.

_“And sometimes comes she with a tithe-pig's tail_

_Tickling a parson's nose as 'a lies asleep,_

_Then dreams he of another benefice._

_Sometimes she driveth o'er a soldier's neck,_

_And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats,”_

He spits the last words, his grin widening further despite the coldness in his eyes. It’s unfair that her brothers can use words like they’re easy, harmless things. They throw their words around without ever having to worry about the damage they leave in their wake.

Allison’s returning smile is all teeth, and really, it’s his fault that she’s too weak to hold back the slippery red words. He deserves it.

1995

“Is that you?” Grace asks her one rainy Sunday. Three rolls her red crayon back and forth on the wooden table. The words _red rouge rojo_ roll out of sight as it reaches the end of her fingertips. She rolls it back towards herself until it’s almost cradled in her palm.

“Yes,” she tells the new nanny. “No.”

The strange woman laughs but it sounds wrong. Everything Grace does is wrong. Her words don’t have any color. “Well, is it you?” She prods again, she’s nice. Nicer than most nannies. Her brothers love having Grace here.

“It’s me. But it’s not _me_.” Three tries to explain, she frowns down at her drawing. No one understands her. Her brothers didn’t understand when she told them Grace was wrong. They didn’t understand her when she told them her words were blank and weightless. 

“It’s a very pretty picture,” Grace hums, ignoring Three’s pout. “You would look lovely in a dress like that.” Then she floats away, already flitting across the room to finish dusting. 

Three huffs. She had drawn herself, yes. But in the picture she’s wearing a big red dress. Like a princess. 

She fidgets in her uniform, shifting uncomfortably in the stiff kitchen chair. She will never be a princess.

She lets the red crayon roll past her fingertips, it hits the floor with a deliciously creamy _tap-crack_.

2008

“I heard a rumor that you loved me.”

1963

“Did you use it on me?”

“Ray, of course not.”

“If you had, would I even know?”

His words are a muted green. She feels that familiar sick dread. God, how she hates green. 

2017

“Look, Mommy!” Claire squeals, hot and yellow, shoving her drawing into Allison’s face.

She takes a deep breath, glances at the art and then nudges it away so she can continue reading the screenplay in her lap. “Is that you?” Allison asks, distracted. “Pretty picture.”

“No,” Allison can feel her daughter’s mounting exasperation. “It’s _you_.”

“Oh.” She looks at the crayon scribbles again. It is her, or, a version of her. An old version. “Maybe Mommy tells you too many stories.”

Claire pouts but grabs a pink crayon and starts drawing a jellyfish fairy.

And if Allison rips up the picture after Claire goes to bed? Well, no one has to know. After all, she never looked good in navy blue.

2004

Diego rarely stutters when he reads aloud. But Allison wouldn’t consider him a _good_ reader.

“Now all the blessings of a glad father compass thee about.” He drawls in a beige monotone. “Arise, and say how thou camest here.”

They only have two weeks a year to work on drama and poetry, and Allison refuses to waste it. “Oh wonder!” She cries, the words taste sweeter than fresh dew in her mouth. “How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O’ brave new world, that has such people in’t!” 

Her words echo in the small room, leaving a ringing silence. Her siblings sit, enthralled by her words. All except one. 

“‘Tis new to thee.” Five mumbles without looking up from their physics textbook and just like that the spell is broken.

2008

The letters shine bright out of the darkness.

H O L L Y W O O D

“O’ brave new world,” Allison whispers to herself, the pastel green words are whipped away by the wind howling around her. She wipes the tear off her cheek.

In the following weeks, Allison learns that everyone’s words in Hollywood are various shades of green. It’s funny really. Hope, greed, distrust, jealousy. They’re all green. It becomes normal, she hardly notices the differences in the shades.

So when Patrick sidles up to her after an audition, she doesn’t register how very lime green his compliments are.

2001

“I heard a rumor that you shot your friend in the foot.”

1961

She stares up at the moon. So creamy white, surrounded by the dark velvety night and twinkling stars. _He’s not up there_ , she reminds herself. No one has ever been up there yet.

It’s completely untouched. 

“O, swear not by the moon, the fickle moon, the inconstant moon, that monthly changes in her circle orb. Lest that thy love prove likewise variable.”

2002

Allison doesn’t speak for two weeks after Klaus’ “accident.” Sometimes her siblings look at her, waiting for her to join their conversations. She ignores them.

Klaus knocks on her door during recreation time on Sunday. She doesn’t let him in. She doesn’t want to look at him too much after what happened.

On the second Sunday of her silence, Diego walks into her room without knocking. She sits up on her bed, indignant. They stare at each other. She knows he’s waiting for her to tell him to leave. To _make_ him leave. But she won’t. She has to be more careful.

Her brother moves towards her, his steps silent like Dad makes them walk during stealth lessons. He hops onto her bed.

“Sometimes my words don’t wor-work either.”

Allison lets the words sit in the air for a minute. They turn stale in her silence. She considers ignoring him until he leaves. But he’s fidgeting and she knows if she doesn’t say anything he’ll work himself into a mess later. And Dad hates it when he stutters.

“My words always work.” She tells the wall so she doesn’t have to look at her brother. He should know, he saw what she did to Klaus. Well, what she _almost_ did to Klaus.

“Klaus misses you.” She glances at him quickly, sees that he’s frowning. Is he mad or sad? It’s hard to tell with Diego.

“I don’t want to talk.” She huffs. 

Her bed shakes when Diego kicks his foot against the frame. He jumps off and starts to walk to the door. 

When he gets to the door he turns around, one hand on the doorknob. “You have to picture the words in your mind.”

1963

“I heard a rumor you killed your brother.”

2013

She’s only walking through the upstairs recreation room, it’s not her destination. Her house is so big, it can take a half hour to get from one end to the other. Patrick is watching some conspiracy thing on TV. They drive her crazy (Frogs on the moon? Ridiculous. Luther would have told her about them.) but not crazy enough for her to make him give them up. She’s almost through the room when Patrick calls out.

“Hey, babe, it’s you!”

She stops dead in her tracks and whirls around.

She is on TV. On the fucking conspiracy channel. In her damn knee-high socks with her brothers. 

It’s an old interview. She steps closer. They’re young, really young. She’s sitting in the center of the group. Luther on her right and Diego on her left. Klaus and Ben sit behind her, Dad had arranged them like this so the cameras wouldn’t see the way Ben’s holding his pulsating abdomen. 

They’re all tense, like strings that had been pulled too tight on a violin. Diego’s fingers are tapping incessantly against the bench they’re on. It had driven her crazy, she remembers. She remembers. She knows exactly which interview this is before the interviewer even asks her first question.

It’s the first interview after Five’s disappearance. All their interviews had rules. They would practice answering and evading questions with their PR tutor on Tuesday mornings. They all had lists of things they weren’t allowed to talk about. Allison had been especially trained to pull the attention away from her siblings if they needed to be rescued. It was her job, Mr. Redding had said, because she’s the girl.

Patrick hmms beside her like the whole thing is fascinating and not intensely painful to watch. “What _did_ happen to your brother?”

He deserves the red words.

1962

She looks in the mirror and for a horrifying second she sees what _they_ see. Those horrible men who hurl repulsive dark words her way as she walks down the street. She can walk away from the men, but the words follow her home.

She wipes away a tear. _I am beautiful,_ she tells herself. _I was a movie star. People loved me._

Somehow, sitting in front of her small vanity in Dallas, twenty-seven years before she’s going to be born, these facts feel more like dreams. 

1994

“I heard a rumor that you think you’re just ordinary.”

1997

The greenhouse smells like dirt and it makes her hair get curlier and curlier the longer she stays. She thinks Four’s hair would probably curl like her hair if Dad let him grow it longer. She’s watching Four’s bangs slowly lift bit by bit and twist up at the ends when her composition notebook gets slapped down in front of her. 

“We will continue to work on our current project.” Madame Chastain tells them in her heavily accented English. “Turn to page 18 in your journals. Quickly.” Their tutor taps the dirt-streaked worktable with her pen in a way that Three could only describe as annoying.

Three easily flips to the eighteenth page and watches her siblings scramble to do the same. One especially struggles, he has to carefully lift one page at a time or else he risks ripping them all. They all watch in tense silence as One slowly turns each page. The greenhouse is always too hot for their starchy uniforms and Three can see drops of sweat forming on her brother’s brow.

“ _Idiot,_ ” Madame Chastain huffs under her breath, her words are almost always orange and rigid, before grabbing the book from One and flipping to the page herself. One blushes bright red and hangs his head in shame. Three scowls at the middle-aged woman.

“We are recording the growth of our bean plants. You will measure your plant in centimeters and record your data in the next available column. Begin.” They all grab their rulers and books and shuffle across the room to the little line-up of pots that hold their plants. 

She watches enviously as her siblings all begin to work. Seven’s beanstalk is long and skinny. Five’s is short and leafy. Even Six has a tiny sprout. They all have something to measure. Whereas the pot with the painted 3 on the front has nothing but some mud.

“Why does my plant never grow?” She asks aloud, tugging at her too tight tie. She hates biology lessons.

“Well,” Madame Chastain drawls from behind her. “What did you expect to happen? You drown the thing.”

Three whirls around, fists clenched. There are a lot of words dancing on the tip of her tongue, but the words come with consequences. Beside her, One gently grabs her wrist.

“Plants need water.” She eventually says through gritted teeth. One lets go.

“Oui, but they do not need so much. A plant needs a balance of sun and water to grow properly. You’ve given your seed far too much water, without even considering how much sunlight it will be getting.”

Then her tutor rolls her eyes. Three opens her mouth, she can feel the words pulsing under her skin, aching to be released. It would be so easy. She could make Madame Chastain say sorry for being mean. Or she could make her leave and never come back. Or she could make Madame Chastain forget everything she knows so she wouldn’t be allowed to teach anymore.

Out of the corner of her eye she sees One shake his head.

She closes her mouth. If she doesn’t say anything, then a mistake can’t happen.

1963

“I heard a rumor that I blew your minds.”

2019

On the red carpet they shout her name, they tell her she’s _gorgeous, stunning, hot_. There’s too many voices to distinguish any colors. She used to love that, but right now it kind of reminds her of the blank empty words that Grace makes.

Allison’s in a red dress, and she’s beautiful, and hundreds of people want her to give them a speck of attention. Her skin is glowing, her hair was styled for hours, her makeup is flawless.

So why does she feel so dull?

2008

Allison has words ready. They’re red and dripping and would tear the pathetic man in front of her apart.

She stops herself, teeth biting her lip hard enough to draw blood.

She struts out of the smelly little trailer. Fuck him. Fuck him and his fake tan and his botox and his receding hair line and his private audition that wasn’t actually an audition.

 _“Using your abilities for personal gain will not be tolerated.”_ Her father’s words echo around her, she can see them floating like ghosts, there but never close enough to touch.

She doesn’t think he ever envisioned her in this scenario though.

And how fucked up is it, that she’s a thousand miles away from him, she’s free from him, but yet, she still needs his _permission_ to exist? To just be herself. 

Reginald put her on a goddamn leash, like she was an unruly dog. She’s been in Hollywood for six months and hasn’t gotten anything more than a cameo and a failed pilot.

She has the power to set the world aflame if she wants to. 

Fuck her dad and his fucking _rules_. 

She turns, marches back into the trailer and let’s her red words fly.

2006

Allison listens as her father blames them for Ben’s death. His words don’t even have the decency to come out black or green. Instead they’re a muted gray. 

It’s all just business to him, she thinks. They’re an investment that isn’t providing the expected payout. 

He can stand there and blame them all he wants. In the end it’s not economics, it’s biology.

Too much water, not enough sunlight.

2018

“I heard a rumor that you’re really tired and want to go to sleep.”

“I’m so tired, Mommy.”

“I know.”

She feels Patrick’s eyes before she sees him.

1963

Raymond stares at her in horror as she tells the man “More, more, more, more, more.”

He hadn’t minded it when she used her words in the clothing store. She loves her husband, she reminds herself. She loves him, even though his words are brighter when he talks about the cause than when he talks about her. She knew that before she married him. He’s driven, there are worse things men can be.

She loves the way his words can be soothing. Dignity and honor, a deep purple that taste like rich cold lemonade on a sweltering day.

But she wants to burn this man. This awful bigoted monster. He burned her first, it’s only fair.

When Ray pulls her away she realizes she did it again.

She lost control.

2002

“I didn’t mean it,” she gasps and looks at her siblings. They stare at her with distrusting eyes. “I didn’t mean it!” She yells. “No, no, no, no.” She stares from atop the staircase.

Klaus is sprawled at the bottom, their siblings by his side.

She clamps a hand over her mouth, but she can still taste the sticky red residue on her tongue.

Diego is fumbling fumbling fumbling and stuttering in pale blue, “I c-c-c-can’t,” his fingers rest on Klaus’ neck. “I d-d-don’t, I c-c-c-”

 _No_ , Allison thinks, hands still firm over her mouth. _I killed him. I killed him. I killed him._

Grace rushes into the room, closely followed by Pogo.

Grace speaks in her calm, empty way but Allison isn’t listening.

She just killed her brother.

He’s so still, so pale, so small. He didn’t deserve this. 

Then, her brother twitches, and like a puppet he’s pulled back up up up, very much alive.

She lets her hands fall to her sides. He’s alive. She can’t hold in the slightly hysterical giggle, _he’s alive_.

But her siblings stare up at her. They _know,_ they _saw._

Klaus had scoffed as Allison smiled at Luther’s joke and placed a strategic hand on his arm. And Allison had seen red. Who was he to judge her? She looked down at the high heels he was stumbling around in, stolen from their mother’s closet, no doubt.

_“I hope you fall.”_

**Author's Note:**

> so i headcanon that klaus has been (accidentally) killed by all his siblings but no one has noticed because he's kinda immortal-ish so there are never consequences for their actions :)


End file.
